Eric asked me what I thought about something he wrote, which led to a long conversation... if you're feeling literary, feel free to add to the discussion.

Original

The first time I saw you, I was afraid to meet you
The first time I met you, I was afraid to kiss you
The first time I kissed you, I was afraid to hold you
The first time I held you, I was afraid to love you
Now that I love you, I'm afraid to lose you

Structural experiments/work:

Playing around with concision…

1.

2.

Both leave out the fact that there’s fear every step of the way… these attempts at concision fail to express the entire thought process in the original.

Eric’s dictation of 2nd version:


Playing around with (exposing) deep structure

1.



Content critique/analysis/exploration:

My first reaction: a certain dislike for the thoughts expressed:

1. Because they express things I don’t like: I don’t want all that fear, especially fear of losing a loved one… that’s too much like the fear of death for me, which I also don’t want. It’s bad enough to be afraid of my own death, without having to also be afraid of the deaths (metaphorical or otherwise) of a relationship in my life.

2. Because they seem “dominant paradigm” to me, like “most people” would probably relate to or agree with the progression in the story, or at least agree that it expresses “just how things are”. And I don’t want to think that the story is “how things are,” I want to think that there are multiple stories, and that’s just one of them… or better yet, I used to think this was the only story but now I’m aware that there are others and I’m looking for a better one… or, this is one story, but let me tell you another story… a story about loving freely and abundantly without attachment. Tell the Buddhist story, or something like it.

I want this piece to be more self-aware, to be self-aware enough to criticize itself, and to present a better alternative. [But that’s not Eric’s purpose with it, as we shall see.]

And I’m not sure that my reasons for not liking it is reason enough to say, “No tell me a different story”
And yet, I still find myself wanting that. Since it expresses a progression of attachments… I find myself wanting more consciousness around calling that out, pointing a way through or around those attachments. Do I buy too heavily into the Buddhist story that attachments are the cause of suffering? Eric, personally, seems to find a beauty in the attachments.

He says the intended audience for this piece is: “the kind of person who’s going through (or has gone through) any of what the story outlines. “It’s not really meant to be uplifting… “

Are you saying that it mainly just tells a history? It expresses plainly what actually happened? “Yes. Two people, one moment, one situation.” “I don’t want to go any deeper than that”

So you don’t want to make any statement beyond the history of it, do not want to express any opinion on it? “Exactly.”

Eric leaves the making of meaning around what happens in the story as an exercise to the reader. But it does this by holding up a mirror to the reader, inviting them to react. The meaning, perhaps, is in the reaction, the intersection of this text and the reader, viz. the reader’s culmination up to this moment of all of his or her life choices to date around love, fear, attachment, relationships, etc. And if they were to go away and change or grow, and then come back to the text as a different person, they’ll take away a different meaning.


Artwork idea

Perhaps “a black and white photo of people kissing, with the words superimposed in a way that doesn’t detract from the photo. [I don’t either to detracted from the other. I want both to have greater impact together than apart.]”